Arizona Teacher Gets Fired For Defending A Bullied Student

Bullying incidents at schools are becoming more and more often. Even though awareness has been raised and measures have been taken, more action is needed to make it all go away. The lack of action becomes obvious when a teacher loses her job, due to defending a kid who has been a victim of school bullying.

Pam Aister had been following a teaching career at Fountain Hills Unified School District for 25 years now, before getting fired last week. All she did was defend a bullied student of hers, 9-year-old Malachi Gillis. His mother, Jennifer Gillis, revealed her son was called the n-word, monkey and crackhead among other racist comments; that had been the case for little Malachi since he started attending classes at Arizona-based Four Peaks Elementary School. School officials were aware of the situation and had lightly punished the bullies.

When Aister saw kids throwing rocks at Malachi, she got involved to defend the young boy. As reported by the school, she told one of the bullies to “watch his back” and called another one an “ugly face”, along with telling them to “shut up” before they explained themselves. The bullies’ parents felt she was a threat for their children and since she didn’t admit to doing what she was accused of, the teacher was fired.

Since then, a petition to hire Aister back has been signed more than 9,800 times.